Dear Reader:
Much is happening. I am just putting the finishing touches on my second novel, THE ITALIAN TRANSLATION. Look for more on that under the "Books" link soon. Over the summer the Georgia Writers Association named me Georgia Writer of the Year for THE POET OF LOCH NESS. That is very gratifying, but it is even better to think that you have read it and enjoyed it enough to visit this site. Thank you most sincerely.

If you have enjoyed THE POET OF LOCH NESS, please encourage your friends and family to read it. As a new novelist, my success relies entirely upon your good opinion and recommendation to others. So, please do continue to spread the word.

Your emails and letters are warmly welcomed, and I do enjoy hearing from you. If you are shy about writing, please don't be. Click the "write me" function on the main page, that is a link to my email, and I do enjoy corresponding.

I have just concluded my tour and am enjoying making plans for the holidays.

Thank you to everyone who turned out to see me in the bookstores. It is a great pleasure for a professor of literature to find so many people who read for the sheer pleasure of reading.

THE POET OF LOCH NESS is a special book to me. Not only does it draw on some of my wife's happiest memories in St. Andrews, Scotland, but it also reflects much of the mystery that I think swirls around the many aspects of love. How do we fall in love, what makes us fall out of love, can we ever truly fall out of love (provided we were in love in the first place), and what is the nature of love itself—especially married love—are just a few of the questions I tried to work through.

This novel also begins what I hope to be a four-book series exploring the seasons of love. THE POET OF LOCH NESS quite obviously explores summer. Its images of growth and ripening—both in the natural world and in the heart—are meant to explore not so much that time of the season or that time in our lives but rather that time in our journey through love—when we have passed our initial flirtation and adoration and are well and truly in that state of devotion that is love. Three other novels will, I hope, follow exploring spring, winter, and finally autumn. The reversal of natural chronology (moving backwards from summer to a past autumn) should start to become clear in the second book.

These FOUR SEASONS books will also draw upon Shakespeare for inspiration. At the end of his career, he wrote four unimaginably beautiful romances. THE POET OF LOCH NESS is in part an homage to Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, which also features a character named Perdita. If you are familiar with the Shakespeare play, you will not see too much direct correlation between his story and mine. However, you might, if you looked deeply into it, see that the imagery and themes—at least some of the themes—have inspired this Scottish novel.

Finally, the FOUR SEASONS series will explore four different women in four different stages of the love realationship. THE POET OF LOCH NESS featured a married woman exploring married love. Future books will explore women who have been widowed, divorced, and, finally, one who has not known marriage.

In each book I will take you to another land—Scotland, Italy, England, and Ireland. These journeys of exploration are meant, of course, to be enjoyable travelogues. But they also reflect that undiscovered country of love, and these women (and the men they meet) are on a quest through the unfamiliar landscapes of the heart.

Here is wishing you good reading.

With love,